Friday, March 29, 2013

The first response from a few Muslims would be "no, no and no!" Muslims cannot celebrate resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not die, he and his message lives on! Whether Jesus was buried and resurrected, or taken up by God, faith in him is shared by more than half of the world inclusive of Muslims and Christians. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, his message of love thy enemy, love thy neighbor and forgive the other will set us free. Can we celebrate that message?

Perhaps I may be the first Muslim to be baptized. It was an enriching experience to me in particular, feeling the symbolic transformation of the feeling of love towards all of God's creation. Muslims feel the same upon performance of Hajj Pilgrimage; we become child-like with love for all of God's creation; life and matter. The Hindus cherish an identical feeling when they take a dip at the Sangam in River Ganges, particularly during the Kumbh Mela.To this Muslim, Easter represents resurrection of Jesus through his message, and Easter is a symbolic day to celebrate that message.

Monday, March 4, 2013

It’s a ransom - if you do that, we will do this. Neither Obama administration nor the Republicans budged from their positions to realign the cuts in expenditures and enhancement of revenues to balance the budget.

We can survive this $85 billion cut, but is this how we deal with the national issues? Republicans are assuming that we are not going to make it in 2014, so what the heck, let’s do the thing that needs to be done any way and make Obama look bad. Our intention smells foul.We have to balance the budget; we cannot spend more than we collect. Indeed, we had a balanced budget when President Clinton left. However President Bush, the macho man loaded with revenge seeking testosterone's had to lie to us to go to war and that is where our destruction began. His actions killed over 5000 of our soldiers and nearly a million Afghans and Iraqis – for what? He piled up a reckless debt of $10 Trillion dollars. That was irresponsible, had he done what Obama did, to go get that one guy Bin-Laden; we would not be in this mess today. Cheney and Bush owe an apology to the nation, their karma is messed up, but they have messed us up. The blame must be placed squarely on the party leadership. The Republican Party programs its members to be sheepish; to shut up and listen to the boss. How many Republican were belligerent towards Bush? We are freaking conformists in a free nation. We have become cowards and don’t have the balls to speak out against our own. It is time to change. I see hope in Chris Christie, John Huntsman, Colin Powell and many more that are speaking up, and add to that list, this little man from Dallas, Texas who will relentlessly pursue the case for sanity in our party.

Had we questioned President Bush and demanded the truth from him, we would have saved the nation, but that is behind, right now, we have to cut spending. Cannot continue with deficit financing of our state. President Obama needs to be aggressive in cutting spending; there is a lot of wasteful spending that needs to be cut. Let it begin with huge pay cuts for the elected representatives, not the ones who make less than $100,000 but any pay check above that. They can demonstrate to the nation that they mean business.

The Republicans on the other hand need to have some common sense, we cannot go cold turkey on budget cuts, and it has to be a gradual and balanced approach over a period of 6 years without hurting the economy. But cuts, we must make.

The good thing about Moderate Republicans is they care for their country more than their party and they will save the party and not the right wingers among us. We need to have a simple (not the arrogant) majority in the house and Democrats to have the simple majority in the Senate. These guys need to fight and spend time on each bill – there shall be no slam dunk of any bill. Most of the evil decisions were made when all the three branches of government were of the same party. As a moderate Republican I detest a monopoly of the party over our governance.If we don’t change our stinking attitudes we will be slaughtered in 2014, all these Taliban’s, 22 of the Republican Senators and some 138 Republican Congress persons must go for voting against women’s equal rights act in the senate. What a shame! I expect more of us Republicans to speak out against these primates. URL- http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2013/03/sequestration-2013-republican-mess.html....... Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel, India, interfaith, and cohesion at work place. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com. He believes in Standing up for others and has done that throughout his life as an activist. Mike has a presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News; fortnightly at Huffington post; and several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes all his work through many links.

My Dream

I have a dream, a dream to strengthen the pluralistic values of America, and the desire to encourage the community of nations to review our values of Liberty, Justice and co-existence as catalysts for prosperity.

No community or a nation can have undue advantages over others. Such benefits are temporary and deleterious to lasting peace.

We have to maintain a healthy balance within our communities and with all nations, what is good for America, has got to be good for the world and vice versa.

SPEAKER, THINKER, WRITER

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker, writer, optimist, educator and an activist of Pluralism, Interfaith, Islam, India and Civil Societies. He manages the Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress and offers Pluralistic solutions to the media and the public on issues of the day.

He is available to speak at your school, university, work place, seminars or place of worship and interfaith gatherings.

He was a speaker and a moderator at the 2009 Parliament of Worlds Religions in Melbourne, Australia, and speaker at Universal Peace Federation's peace initiative in Jerusalem in August 2010

Mike is a conflict mitigater and a goodwill nurturer, all his work is reflected at three websites & twenty two Blogs listed at

http://www.mikeghouse.net/

INTERFAITH SPEAKER

It is my duty

It is my patriotic duty to speak up. Had each one of us spoken, we would not have sacrficed 3000 of our sons and daughters, and massacred a million Iraqi's. Unfortunately, we have to carry this burden on our conscience for the genocide we shamelessly watched and stood by. What are we going to tell our kids? That we were chickens and did not have the guts to speak up?

With the exception of Congressman Murtha and Barack Obama, the senate and the house were scared to death to speak up. Thanks God, November 7, 2006 gave us all new freedom. We need to elect people who are not afraid to speak up, they will be true patriots to our nation and to our values of freedom and democracy.

In my blog, I will be writing things reflective of our values of Justice, freedom and liberty.

Committment

Personally, I am committed to promoting goodwill amongst people, I believe knowledge leads to understanding, and understanding to acceptance and appreciation of a different point of view.

If we can learn to accept and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the 7 billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge.

Ray Bradbury "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy... Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.… Whatever you can do or dream that you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

and this "If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."

Mike Ghouse " Whatever you do in life, do it wholeheartedly, there is joy in it for every one around including ourselves"

Taking a principled stand

Please be aware that I will do my best to take a principled stand on Justice. Which simply means no matter who, what or where there is injustice, I will speak out.

Most of our policies are based on short sightedness, What is our gain? Who can we please and how can we remain in our power positions? Be it our President, Congressman, Senator or a public officer, I will speak out.

When it comes to other nations, if they are non-inclusive and mistreat any segment of their population, I will speak out.

I will defend the goodness of every religion, religion is the reason we have relative peace in the world, without which it will be chaotic. For the crimes of mankind, let's find the culprit and laser bark at him, and not his family, his race, his ethnicity or his religion.

I am a moderate Republican, and my first loyalty is to democracy before the blinding loyalty to my party. Obama is the right man in our history for our nation at this time and I have supported him all the way, the more I know about him, the more I feel he is the right man for the job.My thought process is similar to Obama's. In fact he has used the same words in his speeches that I wrote on my blog a week ahead of him.ISRAEL & PALESTINE

Thank God, I have no barriers between me and another human being.

Time permitting I want to see all points of view with an open mind, ultimately it is me or you, who is going to feel right or wrong about things and the pangs I will endure for realizing that I believed in the wrong thing.

No Imam, Rabbi, Pundit or Pastor is responsible for my actions and finding the truth is my own responsibility. Watching a Hamas movie does not make me a Hamas supporter or a Zionist movie would make me a Zionist supporter. We need to raise about such petty pegs.

My loyalty is to justice; and not to Israel or Palestine, which means support is based on issues and items and not wholesale blind support or un-support.

We do not have peace in Middleeast because of our loyalties to entities and not Justice. Every one wants peace, but they are not going about the right way.

Speaker and Writer

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator.

He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, interfaith, Islam, India, Multiculturism, Terrorism, Peace, Politics and Civic issues. He co-chairs the center for interfaith inquiry of the Memnosyne Foundation and presides the Foundation for Pluralism. He is the president of World Muslim Congress a think tank with a simple theme: Good for Muslims and good for the world and vice-Versa.

His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Web sites and Blogs listed at his personal web site www.MikeGhouse.net . He has authored over 600 articles on Pluralism, interfaith, Islam, India and peace.

His life mission is to open people’s hearts and minds towards fellow beings by mitigating conflicts and nurturing goodwill. He is a peace maker and an educator with two Master degrees and working on his doctorate in Psychology. He has two books on the horizon ; Basic Islam- everything you want to know about Islam and Pluralism, a text book on Pluralism 101.

Mission

My civic Mission is to influence the policy makers of our country, to put our nation on the path of fairness, justice and equity in dealing with our domestic and foreign affairs. "Just" dealings have the power to take us, and the World into the next century with relative peace and prosperity.